Monteverde, CR - San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua
Wednesday morning. The night guard at the hostel I´d bribed to give me a wake up call at 4am never showed. Luckily, this time I woke up for the alarm clock (after a night of very patchy sleep) and made it to the 4.30am bus. It took 2 hours to make the 40 km or so trip to the highway, as the bus stopped every 5 mins and the road was, to put it mildly, absolutely shite. Me and two other travellers (an English couple) got dropped off at La Irma, and watched the bus that the two others were supposed to get go straight past. This was the earlier Nica Bus that I didn´t get a ticket for when I´d bought it on the previous day, so I knew I had to wait for an hour for the next one, but these poor guys were not impressed, especially as the guy who sold us the bus tickets in Monteverde swore that the bus would definitely stop there and even wait for us if we weren´t there yet.
After an hour and a half´s wait, we saw another Nica bus approaching, and literally jumped on the road to wave. It stopped, and some 4 hours later we were on the other side of the border. It definitely wasn´t the luxury bus that we´d been sold tickets for, but at least it got us to Nicaragua. I had a nice lady sitting next to me, from Bolivia, who worked in Nicaragua for the Danish embassy. She spoke really good English and it was nice to chat to someone "local" in depth. She painted a very depressing picture of Nicaragua though and mentioned that Finland gives them a lot of money, but nothing ever improves because of the corrupted government. So stop wasting your money on Nicaragua, suomalaiset. :-)
Crossing the border wasn´t a massive hassle as a guy from the bus sorted it out for us. All we had to do was to work out how to get to San Juan Del Sur, which was all of ours final destination. Luckily there was an American guy on the bus who lived near SJDS and helped us all to get off the bus at the right junction and then catch the local bus. Now THAT was a proper local bus. It was basically an old American school bus, one of those yellow ones, that have seats measured for children. Not that we got seats though. The heat was getting unbearable, but just seeing all the smiling school children getting on and off made it worthwhile. I kept reminding myself that this was still better than Northern line in the summer. At least there were some people smiling!
San Juan Del Sur is a smallish town on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua, supposed to be good surfing. We checked out about 5 different hostels in town (they were all horrible) before settling for dorm beds in Casa Ora, which was the best of a bad bunch. I was still with Will and Claire, the English couple. The rest of the day was a bit hazy as I was so tired from getting up at 4am. It felt like I was suffering from a jet lag, even though there was neither a jet nor a lag involved in my journey. At one point I left my money belt with all my money, passport and credit cards lying on my bed as I went out. Luckily Will spotted it in time. At that point I decided that a siesta was probably a good idea.
The heat in San Juan Del Sur was just something else. Coming from cool Monteverde, it was especially hard to adjust to. In Costa Rica is was green everywhere even though it was supposed to be the dry season there as well, but as soon as we crossed the border everything went dry, dusty and yellow. The wealth differences between the two countries are really noticeable, and I think I had a bit of a culture shock. The first couple of hours here, I hated Nicaragua. It was a bit like crossing the border from Finland to Russia - those of you who´ve done it will know what I mean.
In the evening we went to get some dinner at one of the restaurants on the beach. We just caught the sunset, and all of a sudden I fell in love with Nicaragua.
I had lobster at the restaurant, washed down with a glass of vino blanca, which came to about 6 pounds. It´s generally really cheap here. A beer in a shop costs 37p, and in a restaurant about 70p. Main courses are usually about 2-3 pounds. The dorm bed cost 6 dollars.
It was an early night for me again, and I passed out within seconds of climbing to my upper bunk bed.
The heat in San Juan Del Sur was just something else. Coming from cool Monteverde, it was especially hard to adjust to. In Costa Rica is was green everywhere even though it was supposed to be the dry season there as well, but as soon as we crossed the border everything went dry, dusty and yellow. The wealth differences between the two countries are really noticeable, and I think I had a bit of a culture shock. The first couple of hours here, I hated Nicaragua. It was a bit like crossing the border from Finland to Russia - those of you who´ve done it will know what I mean.
In the evening we went to get some dinner at one of the restaurants on the beach. We just caught the sunset, and all of a sudden I fell in love with Nicaragua.
I had lobster at the restaurant, washed down with a glass of vino blanca, which came to about 6 pounds. It´s generally really cheap here. A beer in a shop costs 37p, and in a restaurant about 70p. Main courses are usually about 2-3 pounds. The dorm bed cost 6 dollars.
It was an early night for me again, and I passed out within seconds of climbing to my upper bunk bed.
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